


Between

by noelia_g



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noelia_g/pseuds/noelia_g





	Between

He doesn't tell Gordon, and hopes that the man doesn't notice the faint pulse. It's one of the many secrets he keeps from the closest thing the Batman has to a friend (Bruce Wayne has friends and acquaintances, but he hadn't really been Bruce Wayne for a while now). Gordon doesn't need another secret to carry after all, the weight of the existing ones is going to slow him down enough. Convenient, that, considering he'll be the one heading the pursuit.

Bringing someone back from the edge of death isn't easy, and isn't cheap, but Batman knows which doctors in the city can be bought, and Bruce Wayne has money to buy both the services and the silence. Bruce Wayne can also bring Harvey Dent to his apartment for the time of reconvalescence, something Batman could never do. Bruce was Rachel's childhood friend, could act in her memory.

Batman can be blamed for Rachel's death, and for anything and everything, but Bruce Wayne can sit at Harvey's bedside and look him in the eye and offer comfort that will be accepted.

Sometimes it is useful to wear a mask.

He isn't entirely sure who had come up first with that whole 'white knight' mantle. Possibly Gordon, since no matter how much he resents the promotion, he sure does have a lot of press-conference material rolling off his tongue whenever provoked even slightly. White knight, dark knight, it's just words, and Gotham is not a giant chessboard, there's no logic, no rules, as has clearly been demonstrated.

It's incredibly surreal, watching the repeats of Dent's funeral ceremony, as they run on every news channel, and quite a few others. By now, he thinks he almost knows Gordon's speech by heart, and, if needed, could repeat it word-by-word (and probably with more conviction than Jim had managed, although that wouldn't be very difficult, considering). It's incredibly surreal, especially as the late Harvey Dent is sleeping in his guest room (well, fine, his bedroom, but Alfred took to calling it the guest room 'since you are not using it, Master Wayne'), his breathing finally evened out.

The left side of his face is covered in bandages again, and the right seems almost as white as them. The healing process will take time, the doctor had said, and he should know, he's the best one Batman could find and Bruce's money could buy.

On screen, Gordon finishes his speech, framed by Harvey's black and white photo. On it, Harvey has the honest smile of Gotham's white knight, the exact person Gordon is describing. Jim himself has that look of long-suffering annoyance he gets sometimes, lips forming a tight line. He had probably grown the mustache just to hide it, but if you know what you're looking for, it's pretty obvious. Last pictures of the gathered crowd, and the anchor launches into a recap of all-too-familiar events of the recent days, Joker, Rachel, Batman. They show Rachel's picture from few weeks back, on the steps of the court, wind playing havoc with her neatly tied hair.

Harvey turns in his slumber, soft sigh that Bruce barely catches. He woke up three times so far, and never remembered the previous ones. Side effects of a great fall (if he had a flair for metaphors and dramatic monologues, he would mean it figuratively. He doesn't) and a mother of all concussions. And, quite possibly, the cocktail of painkillers.

"Bruce?" he says quietly, eyes still closed, and it's different from the 'where am I's of before, leading into exactly the same conversation every time, with Bruce's responses getting monotone and automatic.

"I'm here," Bruce says, crossing the space between the chair and the bed with few steps, coming into Harvey's vision. He reaches to pick up a glass of water from the table and brings it to Harvey's lips, using this as a momentary reprieve from the awkward conversation that's sure to abound.

"Rachel..." Harvey starts, and swallows the rest of the sentence as Bruce shakes his head, looking away. "You loved her," he says, not asks, and it's not exactly what he was going to say either. Bruce thinks about lying, for a split second, but there's enough of untruths clouding the space in the room, enough secrets he will never be able to share, and so he just nods, his eyes fixed on the glass he's putting away, the sway of the water. "I'm sorry," Harvey says, his hand reaching for Bruce's to get his attention. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," he says, with more force than necessary. "It's not," he repeats, and knows Harvey won't believe him.

It's the last time they talk about it, the last time Rachel's name comes up between them. When her face appears on the tv screen again (the news stories alternate between Harvey's death and funeral, Joker's transfer to Arkham, and the hunt for the Batman, and Bruce is close to considering going out and doing something spectacular to draw media's attention. Alfred suggests adopting a child, Angelina Jolie-style, but he's probably joking), Harvey grits his teeth and watches with rapt attention, and Bruce turns away, fingers closing into fists.

Other topics they're avoiding include Batman, Joker, and Gordon, which pretty much means the entirety of the current events covered by the news reporters. Weather takes them only as far as five minutes of really strained conversation, and Bruce is pathetically grateful when Harvey's eyes close, and his breathing levels, as he's drifting off, back to sleep.

His raspy voice startles Bruce, as Harvey's eyes are still closed, and he looks almost peaceful. "Did I thank you?" he asks, and Bruce bites back Batman's words, and instead just shakes his head.

"No."

"I will," Harvey mutters, and Bruce is almost sure he's sleeping now. He turns the tv's sound off, and sets more comfortably into his chair. His earlier plan was to don the suit and at least make Batman's continued presence known to the remnants of the mob, but somehow, he can't will himself to move. There will be time, later.

In three days Bruce has three eerily similar conversations, all telling him to take some time off and rest. He would suspect a wide conspiration, but it's Batman, not him, who is the paranoid one (and this very sentence might just indicate there's something very wrong with him, beyond the obvious, but he prefers not to consider that).

Alfred is first, with gentle reproach and concern, in his best mother hen mode, with "Maybe it would be time to rest, Master Wayne, hmm?" This, however, he is well accustomed to, and therefore immune to. Alfred, of course, knows that, but this doesn't stop him from making the guilt trips. He probably packs the picnic basket.

Then, of all people, Gordon, but this might be just the annoyance talking, as showing up on the roof of the MCU just when the majority of people on the force were turning every stone to find him and kill him very dead, is not close to the best idea he ever had (the best idea he ever had just might be dressing up as a bat. It's really not a good scale to which one should measure ideas).

"I know this might sound ridiculous, but don't you have a home to get back to? Or someone at home?" Jim offers, and Batman gives him a searching look, while Bruce is panicking slightly. And the problem with Gordon is, of course, you can never be sure of whether he's joking, or deadly serious, because the mustache covers up most of his facial expressions. Could he possibly know?

"I guessed not," Gordon finally smirks, and nods. "But all the same, don't let me detain you."

There's not much one can say to that, but Batman is not known for walking away without a final word (walking away in the middle of someone else's sentence is just as good). "Keep me posted," he says, and Bruce has to admit, it's pretty lame.

"Don't you sleep?" Harvey asks later, and when you get concern and sympathy from someone in Harvey Dent's situation (dead, among other things), you know things are getting slightly out of hand.

"Why sleep when you can party?" Bruce says, wide and easy smile that's almost as cheerful as it is fake.

Harvey snorts. "Some party," he mutters, gesturing between them, taking in the bed, the tv, the painkillers on the bedside table.

"It's true, I had better," Bruce agrees, and launches into the story of that one time in LA, with Scarlett and Jessica, but Harvey shakes his head before he even reaches the good part, the one about the donkey in the Ritz' bathroom (and let this be put on record, Alfred clearly has too much fun coming up with all these trips and alibis).

"What happens now?" he asks, and Bruce holds back a grimace. That's exactly the subject he had been avoiding. Along with others he'd been avoiding, of course. There are... options, he'd been considering. It sounds cold and clinical, put like that, but that's how it has to be, there's lot to be taken into account.

"The moment you get better, the jet can take you anywhere you like. Something european, maybe? There's lots of pretty small countries east of Germany, I've heard," he offers, fake smile back on his face in full force.

"I won't leave Gotham," Harvey says quietly, his eyes closing again, and Bruce almost sighs. There's that, exactly as he thought. And the worst thing is, he understands, because for all the Gotham has taken from him, them, this is home. This is the city that holds his parents' graves, Rachel's grave. You can't walk away from that, no matter how much you try (and he went to Tibet, of all places, he should know).

Bruce looks away. "You can't exactly stay, either," he says, smiling faintly. The downside of being the city's hero is the city knowing your face (usually). "What with the nice funeral ceremony, and all."

He doesn't sound very convincing, he knows. Probably because he really, truly doesn't want Harvey to leave. Small european countries are overrated anyway, their roads are never good enough for a Lamborghini (he contemplates buying one. Country, not Lamborghini, although he'll need to replace that, too. He could do something about the roads, and the speed limit, and maybe get Batman a plane.)

"I'd think the ceremony would be the least of my problems," Harvey mutters, his fingers twitching slightly, as if turning a non-existent coin between them. "You don't know," he offers quietly. "The things I've done," another flip, thumb and index finger, and it takes all of Bruce's willpower not to reach, not to still the movement, not to grasp the wrist a little too hard.

"You didn't do anything. Don't you watch the tv?" he gestures behind him, at yet another coverage of the investigation on Batman's whereabouts. The current leading theory is that he was a corrupt cop fired after Dent's internal affairs investigation. He has to admit, Gordon has a flair for dramatics and a nice sense of irony. "It was all him."

Harvey shakes his head again. "I can't let..."

"Yes, you can," Bruce stops him forcefully. "Gotham needs this, needs to believe," he says, then smiles widely. "Besides, you wouldn't want to spoil Commissioner's pretty speech at the ceremony, now, would you?"

He holds still under Harvey's searching glance. "Maybe it does," he says quietly, and then a ghost of smile appears in the corner of his mouth. "She always told me you weren't just a pretty face," he says, an apparent non sequitur, but Bruce understands. He smiles.

"So, at least I'm pretty," he says, the smile fading as the second thoughts appear, but Harvey just rolls his eye, the one not covered with bandages.

"Very pretty," he says, and doesn't quite pull the sarcasm off.

The worst thing is, he's kind of getting used to this, to coming home to find Harvey there, to talk about his day (or lie about his day, as the case may be, but he's pretty sure that's exactly what all the other men coming home from work are doing anyway), to discuss the news that aren't sore subjects (and every day, there's a little more of that).

Alfred is starting to crack jokes about getting domestic, and Bruce just looks at him, but the truth is, this might be the closest he had ever came to a relationship. After all, Bruce Wayne has only had a string of glamorous one night stands, some of them even real, and Batman wouldn't know what a relationship was even if... well, he just wouldn't know.

"What if I..." Harvey starts one night as the conversation stales, and then falls silent. Bruce just looks at him expectantly, and doesn't say anything, doesn't turn away, and almost doesn't breathe. It might be a bit childish but it had always worked on Alfred. And it does seem to work on Harvey just as well, and the man sighs, and looks away through the tinted windows, at the dark city. "What if I wanted to stay?"

"Well, I ought to warn you, the moment you're actually healthy, Alfred will glare at you if you stay in bed past midday," he says, and waits for the impatient huff from Dent. "You do not want Alfred to glare."

"Bruce," Harvey says pointedly.

"Do you?" Bruce asks, turning to face him. "Do you want to stay?"

It's not a fair question, he knows, but to be honest, Harvey's wasn't either. The worst thing is, again, that Bruce wants him to stay, wants it so much it surprises him. And he hadn't thought this through, had no idea where it was going when he picked Harvey's unconscious body from the ground. His mind was a tad occupied, trying to distract Gordon enough for him not to notice Dent was still breathing, planning the escape route from cops and dogs, figuring out how to get Harvey back to his place before he wakes up, running through a list of doctors he might call upon at this time of the night... long term planning wasn't exactly what he was doing.

He still wants Harvey to say yes.

"I don't know."

Close enough. Bruce nods, and turns away, and they sit in silence through the commercials on GCN, then through sports and weather reports. Alfred comes by and asks if they'd be needing anything, and shakes his head sadly at two negatives. "You should eat something, at least," he says, and Bruce isn't sure which one of them is getting the concerned treatment. Possibly both of them.

"We're fine," Bruce says, and Alfred frowns, the way he does when he's too polite to roll his eyes, the way he does when it's clear to everyone Bruce is lying through his teeth. And at the moment, he's lying in so many different ways he's amazed he can actually say it and not be hit by a lightning bolt.

And what if Harvey stays, Bruce wonders. He can't really leave the apartment, not now, not soon. He can't get a job. Can't... There's a definite theme. Face surgery would be an option, but this takes time as well. And for that time, he'd be here, and that might certainly put a stop to at least some of Batman's activities, and be problematic to others...

"You could stay here," he says, and at the very same moment, Harvey offers quietly:

"I want to stay."

They don't look at each other, eyes glued to the screen and a news item on Gordon cleaning out all the departments of cops even slightly suspected of being in someone's pockets. It's been up on tv since yesterday, and there's nothing new, but they watch with rapt attention. You'd almost think none of them noticed as Bruce's hand moves next to Harvey's, and Harvey's fingers close on his wrist.


End file.
